Let’s Get Fidgetal

Fidget spinners! Where do they come from? What are they for? How did this happen? No one knows (or at least we don’t care enough to try to figure it out), but one thing’s for sure: America, a once-great nation, is now lousy with fidget spinners. You can’t hardly turn around without turning one around. They’re everywhere you look!

They’re some places especially. Like our warehouse. Who’s to blame for their Tribblesque proliferation on our premises? In a way, you are. Because you keep buying them. It creates undesirable incentives around here.

Inevitably, the nation’s fidget spinner fever will break. Then, like the pet rock, M.U.S.C.L.E. figures, and Bronson Pinchot before them, fidget spinners will gradually spin to a stop on the junk heap of popular culture. And you know who’s gonna be left holding the bag? We are. Us. Meh. And the bag will be filled with fidget spinners.

Because the only way we’ll ever figure out the fidget spinner market has dried up is by trying and failing to sell yet another warehouseful of them. And we’ll probably have to have that experience more than once before we understand what’s happened.

The end must be in sight. Fidget spinners have started to exhibit bizarre and pointless mutations. Like, it made sense when some started showing up with Disney characters on them. Licensed likenesses of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse gang are a sales-booster on almost any product. (Some exceptions exist: rat traps, personal lubricant, e.g.)

What makes less sense is equipping fidget spinners with onboard Bluetooth speakers.

What purpose does that serve? That’s the wrong question. Changes in the organism are random and directionless. It’s conditions in the environment that determine whether they’re advantageous. We’re guessing this one is not going to rank with the opposable thumb on the all-time most useful variations list.

But perhaps this weird new feature will be the thing that jars our customers out of their fidget spinner reverie and brings an end to the affection these pointless gizmos have baselessly enjoyed so long.

“Wait, they have Bluetooth speakers in them?” you’ll ask. “What in the world for? Why would anyone want that? Actually… now that I’m thinking about it… Why would anyone want fidget spinners at all?”

And like that, our curse will be lifted. Except that we’ll still be sitting on tons of the goddamned things, of course.